Abstract:
Globalization has undoubtedly changed human lives during the era of Information
and Communication Technology (ICT). ICT has become a substantial source of
innovation across the globe. Though there are positive social and educational
benefits of ICT use, scholars are currently attempting to identify whether ICT usage
is destructive since it is related to the psychological aspects. When reviewing each
research paper and other data source individually, there is a dearth of the extensive
literature in pertinence with this research area in the Sri Lankan context. Therefore,
this study primarily focuses on examining how the factors: smartphone usage, social
media usage, Internet usage, device usage, video gaming, and television viewing
influence undergraduates’ psychological well-being. To achieve the proposed
research objective, the quantitative research method was adopted. Primary data
were gathered through self-administered structured questionnaires from the
undergraduates in a state university of Sri Lanka. The SPSS package was used to
analyze the collected data. Basic descriptive statistics, and stepwise regression tests
were performed to determine the answer to the research questions. Consequently,
the key findings revealed that social media usage, internet usage, and television
viewing have a positive significant impact and video gaming has a negative
significant impact on psychological well-being. However, smartphone usage and
device usage have no significant impact on psychological well-being. Moreover,
internet usage is the most influential factor of ICT usage which has the strongest
predicting power on psychological well-being. The findings of the study would be
beneficial to the university students, parents, academic and non-academic staff,
social media developers, mobile applications developers, and television providers to
properly respond to this emergent phenomenon.
